At the Head of the Wolf

Catherine showered the boys with
Money, Sebastian traded the bounty of
His Electric jockstrap for the treasures in
Their ragged boardshorts, but the
Cash ran out — the slavering
Pack set upon the terrified Sebastian,
Ripped what lean flesh they could from
His beautiful body.

The caption sets the 2(X)IST Electric underwear ad in the Spanish beach town of Cabeza de Lobo, the location of the movie Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), in which Montgomery Clift succumbs to a pack of beach boys.

(I’d show more of the Electric line — Sprectrum Blue as well as the Violet Rose above — but all the ads seem to show only headless models, which might as well be headless mannequins.)

On the movie:

(#2)

[in the Spanish town of Cabeza de Lobo (‘Wolf’s Head’:] A group of young men who had been watching [Catherine] from the neighboring public beach start to approach but are intercepted by Sebastian. Catherine comes to realize that he is using her to attract these boys in order to proposition them for sex. Since the boys are desperate for money, Sebastian is successful in his efforts; however, he gradually becomes “fed up with the dark ones” and, being “famished for blonds,” makes plans to depart for the northern countries. One scorching white-hot day, Sebastian and Catherine are beset by a team of boys begging for money. When Sebastian rejects them, they take up pursuit through the streets of the town. Sebastian attempts to flee, but the boys swarm around him at every turn. He is finally cornered among the ruins of a temple on a hilltop. In the meantime, Catherine has been frantically trying to catch up with Sebastian, but she reaches him only to see him overwhelmed by the boys. To her horror and revulsion, they begin to tear him apart and eat his flesh.

Montgomery Clift was one of the great closeted hunks of the silver screen — often brooding and tortured, but usually sultry-sexy, as in this photo on an Italian beach, taken by another movie star of the time, Roddy MacDowall (widely supposed also to be closeted):